In a lot of ways, Krept and Konan would have had an easier go of it had they hit it big a decade later than they did. As it happened, the duo, whose real names are Casyo Johnson and Karl Wilson, emerged from south London’s road rap scene in the early 2010s – a time when British rap was not in nearly as healthy a place as it is these days. “The world wasn’t embracing UK rap like right now,” says Konan.
The duo’s biography, then, is full of firsts and broken records: their first major mixtape, Young Kingz, became the highest charting UK release by an unsigned act when it dropped in 2013; their first album, 2015’s hard-edged The Long Way Home, was the highest charting British rap album ever; two years later, the dual release of 7 Days and 7 Nights, an authoritative, thrilling push into the mainstream, saw Krept and Konan become the first act to have two mixtapes simultaneously enter the Top 10. Their last record, 2020’s acclaimed Revenge is Sweet, had them headlining London’s O2 – the first British rap act to do so.
